


Will I be able to let you go?

by orphan_account



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drama & Romance, Established Relationship, M/M, Romance, What Kind of Future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 17:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20231398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: If you can wish for anything in the world, with no limits, no boundaries, anything in the world, what would you wish for?





	Will I be able to let you go?

**Author's Note:**

> Title and story from the song [What kind of future](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzsUgjnYbo) by Mr. Woozi himself.

"What?"

It takes a century and a decade, or maybe two heartbeats and a missed breath, but the only answer Jihoon can provide is a cough and an awkward clearing of his throat. Soonyoung still laughs, though, understanding completely, twirling a little where he stood by the door to Jihoon's room.

"You're beautiful, too."

Beautiful is an understatement, Jihoon thinks as he walks towards his groom, looking perfect as the aligned stars and the mysterious fate and the expanding universe that brought them together. Perfect.

_Perfect,_ he thinks as he reaches for Soonyoung's hands.

_Perfect_, he thinks as he finds galaxies in his eyes, and their future written in constellations. Wishes and dreams and hopes.

_Perfect_, he thinks when he thinks of Soonyoung.

Soonyoung is perfect.

This is what Jihoon thinks again hours later, when he has Soonyoung in his arms, but his white suit is seeping with red. Red. Red. Red.

So much red.

Too much red.

The stars twinkle above them in sympathy, _oh these poor lovers,_ they must think, because fate had been cruel to them.

You don't even know, Jihoon thinks as he screams Soonyoung's name over and over.

Had fate been kinder, even by just a bit, Soonyoung would've told Jihoon he loved him one last time. But fate is anything but kind. Fate is cruelest to the souls with the kindest hearts, is what Jihoon thinks because

_How could they take Soonyoung away_?

_Without a good bye?_

Soonyoung lies pale and lifeless under the same pale and lifeless moon turning red in Jihoon's vision. As red as Soonyoung's suit. Everything is red. Everything tastes like sorrow and bitterness and blood.

Jihoon holds onto Soonyoung's body, his screams uselessly flooding the night with bare agony.

Sirens. People. Footsteps.

Whispers?

Voices?

Hands.

They try to pull him away, but Jihoon holds on. He holds on to the last beautiful part of his life. To the last perfect part of his life. Now taken away. Forever.

Gone.

Soonyoung is beautiful. And perfect.

And gone.

Jihoon punches Death, but he's faster and millennia wiser, and he catches Jihoon's strong fist with a calm hand.

"How many times?" Jihoon asked, voice scratched and broken from crying. And crying. And crying.

"214," the answer is warm and patient. Friendly. Even though Jihoon thinks Death is anything but. "And the 214th time you asked the same question."

"Again," Jihoon says, pulling his arm from Death's grip.

He doesn't look at Death's eyes as dark as night or Jihoon's nightmares or Jihoon's future without Soonyoung. Eyes that would see through him, see through his tired soul, and his tired heart, and his stupid _stupid_ hope.

"Again," he repeats, more firmly.

Death only nods, sympathetic. "As you wish."

"I love you."

Soonyoung manages to tell him this time before Jihoon gets pulled away by firefighters from Soonyoung's embrace.

Jihoon is screaming and struggling against arms that rescued him, but what is the meaning of this life, Jihoon thinks, without Soonyoung? Without Soonyoung, there is nothing in life more for him.

The firemen have to hold him down to keep him from running back into the burning house to get to Soonyoung. His Soonyoung. Of this lifetime. And the next.

_Don't worry, sir, we'll return to get your husba-_

There is an explosion, a gas tank the news will tell later, and Jihoon knows it's too late.

Too late.

Soonyoung is gone.

Again.

"Again."

"Jihoon-"

"Again!"

"As you wish."

"Remember when we first met?"

Jihoon rolls his eyes. "Seriously, that's what you've been thinking?"

"Well, we are in our wedding, and I'm dancing with the most gorgeous man in the room, next to myself of cour- OW!" Soonyoung laughs, taking Jihoons hand and placing it back on his shoulder. "I just can't help but remember where we started, you know."

"How can I forget the way you barged into the radio booth in Seoul U just to request a song for your crew member in the hospital? Scared the living daylights out of Bumzu-ssaem, too."

"And then I kept coming back to request songs just to see you again."

"I knew you were a stalker!"

Soonyoung pecks him on the lips to get him to shut up, and it is effective as per usual that Jihoon is annoyed at how much Soonyoung controls him.

"You're kind of amazing," Soonyoung tells him as they waltz through the hall. "Putting up with all my bullshit. Teaching me how to bat until I can play in the club. Taking me to Busan when I needed a headspace."

"I'm already in love with you, Kwon, you don't have to flatter me too much."

Soonyoung laughs before nuzzling Jihoon. "I just can't believe when we wake up tomorrow, we'll be husbands, you know?"

Jihoon holds him, fond and soft. "I know. Me either."

The thing is, Soonyoung doesn't wake up the next day.

"You already know my answer, Death."

Death doesn't sigh. He doesn't blink when he nods, and only says. "As you wish."

Soonyoung is the brightest star tonight, Jihoon thinks as he watches Soonyoung be coated in stage lights and confetti and screaming of thousands of adoring fans. He wonders if could he love anyone as much as he loves Soonyoung. He wonders if he loved Soonyoung as much in his previous lifetime? But no doubt, he thinks, that he will love Soonyoung more in the next.

That's what he thinks when holds Soonyoung again later, already cold and unmoving. Gone without a good bye.

_A stampede after the concert. _Jihoon watched behind the monitors from Soonyoung's dressing room, and he had never felt so helpless before. He saw Soonyoung disappear through the crowd of people pushing to touch him.

And then after… he's gone.

Jihoon had stood in front of the screen unmoving, unbelieving, tears in his eyes.

Just as he's standing that moment, beside Soonyoung's body, holding Soonyoung's pulseless hand.

"I love you," Jihoon says. "In this lifetime. And the next."

Jihoon had bargained with Death before. Asked if he could at least have his memories of his previous life so he knew how to prevent Soonyoung's deaths in his next try. When he jumps back through time to try to save Soonyoung.

Again.

And again.

But Death had shook his head, shaking his head again this time, that he can't. Jihoon is favored by the gods, granted one wish he is wasting to save the love of his life, but Death can only do so much. Death can't even bring Soonyoung back to life. Death can only help Jihoon relive his life, over and over, until Jihoon can spend the rest of it with Soonyoung.

But he had been trying. Throwing away his life and years and centuries and songs to a boy who never sees past the sunrise of their first day as a wedded couple.

"Jihoonie?"

"Hm?"

"If you can wish for anything in the world, with no limits at all! No boundaries. Anything in the world. What would you wish for?"

Jihoon holds Soonyoung's hand as they wait for the sunrise in front of the beach of their hotel for their honeymoon. Both of them are in their white suits, already crumpled and messy from where they were picked up from the floor, now wet and dirty because of the salt water and the sand.

But Jihoon doesn't care for the world with Soonyoung beside him. He doesn't have anything to wish for when he already has Soonyoung beside him. He tells Soonyoung as much.

"That's stupid," Soonyoung frowns at him.

"I got it from you, idiot."

"That's fair, but also a stupid answer," Soonyoung tells him. "You can have anything in the world, but you won't ask for anything?"

"What would you wish for then?" Jihoon nudges him, playful, happy, peaceful.

He never gets an answer.

Jihoon remembers all his lives when he meets with Death. Remembers all the times he tried to save Soonyoung and failed. Remembers which lives he managed to say good bye, and all the lives that he hadn't.

Jihoon remembers Soonyoung. Bright. Beautiful. And perfect.

"Again?" Death asks him.

Jihoon closes his eyes.

He knows the answer. He knows how to stop the cruel cycle of life and death and never getting Soonyoung to live past his late twenties. He knows the answer, and yet he hesitates.

"You don't know if it's true," Death tells him, reading his mind, and giving advice. "It's only based on assumption."

"I've tried everything," Jihoon answers, his voice strained and defeated. Defeated yet with purpose. "And it's not enough. It's the only way."

Death smiles sadly. "This will be your last, then?"

"Yes," Jihoon says, a whisper. A breath. A decision. "I'll go back to before I ever met Soonyoung. And make it so that I will never meet him at all."

"He will never know who you are, or how much you love him."

_He will never know that he is my song and the reason I write songs in the first place. That he is the reason I believe in tomorrow, that I hold on to hope._

Soonyoung will never know Jihoon, and the stars and the universe that aligned so that they might meet.

"But he will live," Jihoon argues. "I've had him for all his other lifetimes. I want him to have this one. I've meddled with his life enough."

Death puts out a hand. "It was nice meeting with you, Lee Jihoon."

"Likewise."

It's Death's final gift, Jihoon thinks, that he remembers a boy named Soonyoung whom he hasn't met yet. And will never meet.

Jihoon wonders if it would've been easier if he doesn't remember Soonyoung at all. Ah, he berates himself, but he wouldn't want it any other way. He wouldn't want to forget the bright boy. Beautiful and perfect. He might not know the sound of his laughter in the lifetime, but he has enough memories of him he will keep to the end of his days.

Death had made it perfect, it seems. Jihoon had broken his spine in his younger years that he is unable to walk or stand. Because of this, he is unable to get his baseball scholarship to Seoul U, where he would've met Soonyoung.

He will never go to Seoul, he thinks to himself, as he fiddles with the notes on his guitar, another song about his star in his mind. He will satisfy himself with the memories of the boy he loves the most.

Jihoon nods, and hums to a tune. He will live like this, he thinks. He will live and thrive in the knowledge that somewhere, Soonyoung is living his best life. Without Jihoon.

The note he strums is sad and melancholic. But hopeful.

Because Jihoon believes this is the last chance hope gave him, and he will make good use of it.

_CRASH!_

There is an ugly hole on Jihoon's window, and on the floor is an ugly baseball.

Jihoon mutters. The kids should really be careful with how they handle their pitches. He moves his wheelchair to pick up the ball, and finds three letters written on it in a familiar messy handwriting.

_KSY_.

"I'm sorry! I'm an idiot! The biggest in the world! I'll repay for your window, I promise! And never come back to Busan, probably. This is my first time here and I'm already making a mess! I swear to god, that batter teaching me is the worst. And I'm just really really sorry!"

By Jihoon's door, in white baseball uniform, stands the boy made of dreams and stars and hope.

So much hope.

"Hi," the boy says sheepishly, never looking at Jihoon's legs, his gaze strong and sure right at Jihoon's eyes, boring into his soul. "You look familiar. Have we met before?"

_Yes_. "I doubt that," Jihoon says with a small smile, nodding to his wheelchair.

Soonyoung flushes. "I didn't mean to-"

"I know you didn't." _I miss you._ "It's fine. The window's fine. You don't have to-"

"I insist!"

His eyes are galaxies, Jihoon remembers clearly. Or universes? Holding stars and memories and songs. Love songs. Heartbeats. Music.

"Okay," Jihoon whispers, because he's weak, and in pain and in so much love.

"Okay," the boy relaxes, then steps inside Jihoon's room. "I'm Soonyoung. Kwon Soonyoung!"

"Jihoon," Jihoon says, shaking the hand he had been wanting to hold again. "Nice to meet you, Soonyoung."

"I still feel we've met before," Soonyoung tells him. "Is that weird?"

_I love you_. _I love you more than you can know._

"Very."

"Soonyoung."

Soonyoung turns and smiles when he finds a friend. "Death."

"He's decided. He still wants to save your life."

"By never meeting me in the next one?"

"Yes."

Soonyoung smiles. That's very much like Jihoon.

"What is your wish?" Death asks.

"To meet him. In this lifetime. And the next. And the rest of it."

Death shakes his head. "You're a peculiar two."

Soonyoung shrugs. "I'll want him whichever future."

"As you wish."

When Soonyoung died the first time, he stood by his corpse and watched Jihoon cry like the world had collapsed over him. Maybe it had for the boy.

It had.

Death placed a hand on his shoulder and introduced.

"When a person dies, they're given a wish," Death explained. "They can wish for anything in the world except for life. They can wish for the hope and life of the person the loved the most. They can wish for eventual peace and joy and future."

Soonyoung had only looked at Jihoon and said. "Him."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Give him my wish instead."

"You can wish for anything in the world, and you're giving the chance to him?" Death had asked.

"Yes."

"Then, as you wish."

Had Soonyoung been able to answer Jihoon's question about what he would wish for, he would have told the other boy, "You."

_I will wish for you over and over again_.

**Author's Note:**

> edit: Suddenly What Kind of Future is trending. Stan Jihoon.


End file.
